Healthcare: The Final Frontier

The healthcare industry lags behind every other industry when it comes to implementing new technology. With the number of internet users increasing from 738 million to over 3.2 billion in the last decade, today’s technology pervasiveness has ensured that healthcare technology users are also Amazon customers, Twitter followers, and Facebook friends. After interacting daily with technology for years, their experiences have become rooted in a history of well-established routines.

People demand and expect immediate access, ease of use, and simple interactions with technology anywhere and at any time. It’s no surprise that people have started to wonder, When will healthcare jump on the technology bandwagon?

Healthcare product development has been slow, inefficient and ineffective. Driven largely by need, healthcare technology has primarily been focused on enhancing administration and process efficiency with little to no regard for its users.

Many organizations looking to get a bigger bang for their buck have developed products that are complex and difficult to use, missing the mark where it matters most. They have forgotten to ask simple questions like: Does this product provide value? Is it easy to use? Will people need and want to use it? They have forgotten products are only as good as the people who use them, not the people who built them.

With over $18 billion invested in healthcare technology ventures within the last six years, the healthcare industry is on the brink of a massive transformation. Both start-ups and established companies seek to leverage technology to improve not only the administration and continuum of care but more importantly patient empowerment.

As healthcare organizations face unprecedented challenges to improve quality, access, and cost, putting the patient at the core rather than adopting a technology-first approach will be critical.

Today, healthcare patients fall well short of what people expect and get from every other company with which they interact. Understanding patient perspectives and what they need to take ownership of their health will be key to improving the quality of care, adoption and adherence at much lower costs.

At HatchWorks, we are perfectly poised to help drive the digital transformation in healthcare. While many companies are driven by what their clients ask for and/or what they think their clients need, we recognize that we, as the people who build the products, are not necessarily the people who will use them, and neither are our clients.

With every client, we look, listen, and learn. We immerse ourselves in understanding users’ needs, goals and behaviors in an effort to design an experience that best aligns with their desires and expectations. Patient experiences should be designed no differently than these customer experiences. With our user-centric approach, we know we can help close the gap.

Please contact us to see how HatchWorks can help your business create innovative healthcare solutions, or connect with Janice